Vex smirked. “What? Even if it means you won’t be—what’d you say—neck-deep in a pool of wine in a few months?”
“A tub of wine.” She sighed. “Despite what Cansu thinks, I’m not heartless. And”—she paused, her eyes dropping from his—“you never wanted to hole up somewhere like I did. You wouldn’t have been content to retreat and let chaos keep churning.”
Vex had never asked himself what he wanted. He, Nayeli, and Edda had planned on retiring for months—but that was back when Vex thought Argrid had just been after him. The moment he’d suspected a bigger scheme, he’d let Lu’s righteousness infect him like a plague.
His shoulders went slack. “We should make each other’s life decisions from now on. I’ll put you back together with Cansu, and you can make me some kind of hero.”
Nayeli yanked her hand off his knee. “Asshole.”
“You love me.”
Outside the shack, the thud of a footfall made them both shut up. But when Vex stood and opened the door, the road was empty.
Nayeli came up behind and gave him a shove. “Find Lu. You need to explain your real connections to this.”
Vex groaned, long and loud and more than a little childish. “Yes, Mother.”
She slapped the back of his head. He relented, plunging into the night.
Vex ran into Edda outside the lodging his crew used when they came here. She sat on the ground, watching nearby Tuncians take turns throwing knives—either a game or, after Cansu’s announcement, practice for what was to come.
Vex shivered. Yeah, he needed to stop this.
He kicked Edda’s boot. “You seen Lu?”
She nodded at a tent across the way. “Saw her going to talk to Teo.”
Vex ducked inside. It was dark when the tent flap closed behind him, so he held it open to let in light from the torches outside.
“Lu?” he whispered. “You in here? I need to—”
A gust of wind carried through the open flap, but where it should’ve fluffed the other walls, it hissed through a split in the back. Vex squinted.
And started to panic.
“Lu? Teo?” He moved the flap wider to let light into the whole tent. The slice in the rear of the fabric was tall enough for a body slip through, and the bed in the far corner was mussed but empty.
Vex burst through the cut. He was on a narrow path that ran between other buildings, one that wouldn’t be visible from the main road.
By the time Vex got back to Edda, Nayeli had joined her. He was shaking too much to be grateful that they both looked up at him—he knew they’d jump into action with only a word. But all he could think about was that footfall outside the shack when he’d been speaking with Nayeli. About Argrid.
He grimaced. “I think they’re gone.”
19
RAIDERS HAD ABDUCTED Milo. And Vex, all this time, was working with Argrid.
Lu’s terror slammed up against the pieces of information she didn’t yet know—what was the extent of Vex’s involvement? Did he follow Argrid out of loyalty, or was he a pawn? Had his arrest days ago been part of some scheme after all? But why?
Lu could stay with him and his crew until she pieced together more. Vex didn’t know she had heard him. . . .
And she would have stayed, if not for the boy holding her hand. She had tolerated Teo here because she’d thought, in some questionable part of her mind, that she had control over this journey.
Now she knew she was had no control at all.
She had to get Teo back to New Deza. She would slip into the castle and speak to her parents before news of her return spread—Kari and Tom would be able to understand the convoluted events, the brewing tension with Cansu’s syndicate, the definitive threat from Pilkvist’s. More, they would be able to forgive her for running off with Devereux Bell.
Lu had no right to feel betrayed. Vex and his crew had never promised to be anything but what they were—raiders. Criminals.
She wheezed on a sudden thought: If Vex was connected to Argrid, could Pilkvist be as well? Could Milo’s abduction still have been staged? A syndicate working with Argrid to cripple Grace Loray meant threats would come at the Council from two fronts: within and without.
Cansu had rallied her syndicate to attack on the belief that the Council’s own manpower was weak. And it was. The revolutionaries had needed the support of raider syndicates to overthrow Argrid in the first place—so if both Argrid and raiders were to attack the Council?
Everything would crumble.
The threat was too big for her to handle—prejudices, fears, collusion, hatred, war. A self-indulgent desperation sent a whimper scratching at Lu’s throat. She wanted her parents. She needed to tell Kari and Tom everything she had learned, and they would take the information and work their wonders to smooth it away. Just like they had when she was a child.
They would make it better. They always knew what to do.
Lu stopped between two quiet shacks and knelt before Teo, rubbing her thumbs over his wrists. “I’m sorry I scared you earlier. I should not have behaved like that.”
He smiled in the twilight. “You’re sad. People do lots of things when they’re sad.”
Lu put her hand on his cheek. She didn’t deserve his smile.
“We have to—” Oh, he’d hate leaving Vex and his crew, and Lu couldn’t tell him the truth of it. “We have to play a game now. We have to get to the Rapid Meander without anyone catching us. Can you do that?”
Teo lit up. “Oh, yes.”
He grabbed her hand and shot forward, yanking her arm so hard her shoulder popped. Lu pushed to catch up, correcting their path before he led them in the wrong direction.
They raced between shacks, dodging the noise of the Tuncians, until they came to the edge of the sanctuary. The door Lu had arrived through stood in the wall of one of the looming tenement buildings, plain and nondescript. Would there be guards be on the other side?
Lu’s hand went to her weapons holster. She yanked it down and led Teo to the door.
It opened easily enough, revealing a staircase leading up. As soon as they entered the stairwell and shut the door behind them, darkness enveloped them.
Teo’s grip tightened. “Lu?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for bringing me.” He sighed. “Mama and Anna would have liked it. Being a raider, I mean.”
No, Lu almost said, the word a kick in her throat. Bianca and Anna wouldn’t have liked this. It’s dangerous and too much like how we used to live. They didn’t deserve it. Neither do you.
Lu squeezed Teo’s hand, her heart fracturing. “I know” was all she managed.
She led Teo up the stairwell, one hand on the humidity-slick wall. All was silent apart from the creaking of the building at night and the occasional distant snore.
They reached another door, this one leading to a hall. A few moments of wandering up and down shadowy door-lined hallways ended when Lu reached a pair of doors set in an alcove, cleaner air filtering through.
Lu took a knob in her hand, but paused.
She had been blind when they came here, and Cansu had disoriented her even further. How would she find the Rapid Meander? What if Vex had moved it? What if, while hauling Teo around Port Mesi-Teab to find it, she stumbled into a situation more dangerous than lurking in shadowed tenement halls?
“Lu?” Teo tugged on her. “What now?”
Anxiety gripped Lu. Any moment, Vex could come looking for her. Edda could find Teo missing.
Ignoring the scream of objection from her better self, she bent closer to Teo.
“You see this corner, right in here by the door?” She pointed to the double door’s alcove. “Stay here. I’m going to chart our path.”
Teo crossed his arms. “I can come. I’m supposed to find the boat too!”
“You will, but I need you to stay here and keep watch. If you see anything, shout—and keep on shouting until I get back to you.”
If not the Meander, surely Lu w
ould find a transportation option within shouting range of this building.
“I thought the game was to be quiet?”
Lu winced. “That was before we got out. This is different.” She pointed at the floor. “Sit here and wait for me to come back. I won’t be long, I promise.”
Teo nodded. “I’ll be good. You can trust me.”
He dropped, curled into a ball, and stared straight at the door.
Lu moved before she could rethink leaving him alone in this decrepit tenement building, where anyone could come out and see a defenseless little boy. What were her options? She had no idea what prowlers populated Port Mesi-Teab.
Lu swallowed her objections and utter self-hatred and pushed her way outside.
Night had lifted some of the dense humidity, making it easier to breathe. Lu heard raucous shouting on the left along with the whining of a stringed instrument—a tavern. She headed to the right, trying to smell her way to a river. But every road stank the same, the musk of mold and the rancidness of festering waste.
Lu strained to hear any noise from behind, either Teo screaming or voices in search of them—but each step she took weighed on her. She cut down a road, slinking through shadows to avoid men heading in the opposite direction, and paused to think under a holey awning.
A river couldn’t be this difficult to find. Had she gone far enough west? Should she—
“I know your type.”
Lu’s heart shot into her throat. Cansu leaned against the doorway of a closed butchery, her body wrapped in shadows.
“Self-absorbed Grace Lorayans who’ll sell out raiders for half a galle,” Cansu continued. “You’re off to warn the Council about our uprising, aren’t you? Fatemah told you—you won’t survive betraying us.”
Lu pushed past as if she didn’t find Cansu a threat. “I won’t betray you. This has nothing to do with the Tuncians.”
She turned a corner, Cansu just behind her—and finally, a river appeared between the buildings. The other bank of the waterway showed the city suffused in the late hour’s blue-black hue with silhouetted people shuffling down the roads.
Lu looked downriver, then up. The light from the half-crescent moon might have been weak, but it lit enough that she could see a boat tethered a few paces down, on the opposite bank. The Meander? She doubted her luck was that good.
Something metal poked her rib cage. A knife.
Molten terror swept down Lu’s spine. “You won’t kill me here,” she tried.
“I’m a raider Head. I’ve killed people all over these rivers. I’m not about to let some Grace Lorayan brat warn the Council that—”
“You’ve killed people all over these rivers,” Lu repeated. She looked over her shoulder with a grim smile. “So have I.”
She rammed her elbow back. Cansu dodged, thrown off enough that Lu had time to spin, sweep Cansu’s legs, and send the raider Head crashing to the muddy road. Lu took off up the riverbank. The walkway was narrow—buildings pressed so close on her left that she kept a hand on the scratchy wood to steady herself, the stones of the shore disintegrating under her boots to the right. A thumping carried from behind—Cansu pursuing.
Lu ran faster as she came upon the moored boat. She eyed the distance across the river to it—she would have to swim. The thought of sinking into the polluted, oily water made her stomach spasm, but she drew a breath—
And tripped, catching herself on the windowpane of a building. Behind her, Cansu struggled up the walkway, but Lu ignored her to get a look at what had felled her.
A log. She slid her fingers under it. The bark didn’t crumble in her hands—it might hold her weight across the river.
But all her plans clattered away as the log . . . moved.
The rough wood squirmed against her palm. Lu jolted upright, her foot hitting the edge of the slick riverbank, sending her crashing back to the ground. Shadows listed as the log rose, swung around—and looked at her, two glassy eyes blinking over a jagged snout.
A crocodile.
Lu didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Her eyes stayed on the croc’s, every nerve strung too taut to function.
Crocodiles populated the southern swamplands. But outside of that, they were rare—so rare that seeing one here petrified her.
“Whoa there!” a voice bellowed. Not Cansu.
The steamboat on the other side of the river had sailed over, its engine rattling. The dark hull, battered with lack of upkeep, stopped so close Lu could have touched it.
It wasn’t the Meander.
Lanterns sprang to life on the deck. One of the men aboard looped a cord around the croc’s neck, pinning it at the end of a long rod.
“Well now, what did my pet catch me tonight?” he drawled.
Lu didn’t need to look at him to know who he was. These raiders were the only ones who would have animals from Backswamp: raiders from the Mecht syndicate.
Downstream, Lu heard nothing. She risked a glance—the walkway was empty.
Cansu had left her to fend off these men alone.
Mud soaked into Lu’s backside as she stared into the crocodile’s eyes. The leash around its neck wasn’t comforting—one move, and it could snap its jaw around her ankle. Haul her deep into the river. Thrash her around the bottom, over and over until her lungs filled with water. Teo would be left alone until Vex found him, or Cansu, most likely.
Lu transferred her gaze from the croc to the Mecht raider. He smiled, his sweaty cheeks pale in his boat’s lantern light.
“Look what we got here.” He kicked one leg up to lean on the railing, chewing as he sneered at her. “Heard a tip that Bell’d been spotted in this area. Yer not what I was hoping for, but you’ll be useful. Now, where’s that captain of yours?”
They wanted Vex? How did they know she was with him?
“He’s not my captain,” Lu said. But—damn it, what cover would be best? Would it work to have them believe she was his prisoner, or his crew member, or an errant bystander?
The Mecht tugged on the leash, and the croc clicked its jaw in a threat that made Lu jolt.
“I was looking for him,” Lu tried, her voice high and fast. “I thought your boat was his.”
“Uh-huh,” the Mecht repeated. “See, I’m not so sure about that.”
He didn’t tug this time—he let the rod go limp. The croc dove at her, its massive jaw opening. Part of Lu knew it would be a trick again, a hiss and a snap only to scare her.
She couldn’t process the feeling of teeth in her leg.
She watched, muscle and flesh tearing as the croc clamped its jaw into the meat of her left calf. The sensation came to her slowly, her mind removed so the pain traveled up her leg, creeping through her belly, until it ruptured out of her mouth in a scream.
Like a dozen weighted daggers slicing into her leg. Like the force of a hundred bullets exploding into her nerves all at once.
Lu gagged, a broken shriek filtering through her clamped lips.
The Mecht tightened the leash, keeping his pet close enough so the croc held Lu’s shin like a clamp. Blood leaked down the creature’s teeth, dribbling onto the mud as the croc dug its claws into the bank, readying, needing to drag her into the river.
Lu fought the desire to arch back, to fight. Her needs were as strong as the croc’s, frenzied and feral, and all she wanted was to grab one of her knives and impale the creature between its eyes. But even the movement of breathing tore its teeth deeper into her leg.
“Now, I ask again,” the Mecht said, “where is Devereux Bell?”
“Burn in hell,” Lu rasped, sweat pouring down her face.
The Mecht smirked. “I intend to. But I’ll bring you with me.”
He waved at some of his crew, who leaped off the boat and landed next to Lu. The captain clicked his tongue twice and the croc opened its jaw, breaking free of her leg. The teeth ripping out of her flesh were almost more painful than the bite—Lu bit down on her tongue to keep from screaming again.
Don’t draw atten
tion. Teo probably already heard.
She was so distracted by pain and the certainty that Teo would show up at any moment that Lu forgot the men until they grabbed her arms. They lifted her awkwardly, sending all her weight rushing onto her injured leg. She moaned, hands in quivering fists.
The crew tossed her aboard. The captain crouched before her on the deck as his men clambered back onto the boat and the engine revved, steam chugging into the sky.
Now that Lu was closer, she saw the bloodshot veins around the captain’s pupils, the bruised quality under his eyes of someone on a Narcotium Creeper high.
“Think Vex’ll come to save you?” he drawled.
Lu panted. “I don’t need him to save me.”
The Mecht dug at one of the tooth punctures his croc had made in her leg, finger crooking into her muscle.
Stars swam over Lu’s vision. All she could see was blackness, throbbing and hot, and she dropped to the side, retching on the deck as that blackness became too powerful, too enticing.
“You better hope he comes after you,” the Mecht said, rising to tower over her. “If he doesn’t, you’ll get to see more southern stream raider hospitality.”
Don’t faint. Lu braced herself on the deck, spitting vomit on the boards. Observe. Plan. Act.
But each blink sent her vision spiraling further, her body drifting in a current of debilitating pain. Pain as she had endured once before.
The memory of it made her erratic pulse hum.
She had known men like these, but Argridian soldiers. A night like this, only five years ago. The rebel headquarters instead of a steamboat. Tied to a chair instead of sprawled on a deck.
Then, the clanking of vials. A voice. “Drug her.”
Lu heard it so distinctly from her memory that when she saw the captain’s lips move, she shook her head, not understanding him until he added:
“Lazonade. It’ll keep her nice and quiet till we get back.”
Lazonade. Rare, coin-shaped green leaves. Made into a paste. Rubbed on the skin.
Causes immobilization. The taker retains consciousness. Counteracted by the speed-giving plant Incris.
Despair pulled every sense toward a collective unraveling.